Top Reasons For Keeping A Landline

It seems as if cell phones have always been with us but they haven't. I don't remember exactly when cells started to become omnipresent but today almost everyone has one. Where does that leave the venerable land line, you know, the phone hooked up to the wall? Believe it or not there are still some good reasons to have one.

Obviously many businesses still are hard wired but, according to MSN, land line home phones come in handy too.

--Several older relatives and friends have hearing issues and thus have trouble understanding conversation conducted via cellphone.
--Sometimes cell calls can be hard even for a person with no hearing impairment. Sometimes the voices fade in and out or static will overwhelm the line.
--If there's an emergency and you eed to call 9-1-1, help will find us: Landlines are attached to addresses.
--Landlines almost always work during power failures.

As for that last reason, sure, you can use your cell during a power failure but what if the battery taps out. Where do you plug it in? Your car? A hassle. By the way, I don't have a land line anymore either.

How do you get kids to do something other than go on the Internet? That's a question Japan is planning to answer. In order to combat a growing number of children who are hooked on going online, the country is mulling over instituting 'fasting' camps in which youngsters will be shipped to facilities with no Internet access to discover how to live without this ubiquitous technology.